How Natural Healing Developed in America

In Europe, physicians already had a
centuries old monopoly over the right to treat patients. But in
America, medical practice was literally open to anyone who called
themselves a doctor.

The American public, newly liberated
from England, was hostile to professionalism and foreign elitism of any
kind. And, the educated physicians who immigrated to America from Europe
were nothing more than Quacks practicing heroic medicine.

In America, the Popular Health
Movement played a central role in the development of natural healing.

American physicians gradually
substituted the simplicity of science for the autocratic traditions of
Europe and gained social status and acceptance.

Unlike the Spanish and French Colonies the British
felt no obligation to supply health care to their colonies. Most
British colonies had cross sections of healers such as
barber-surgeons, apothecaries, midwives, and others without academic
credentials.

As the New World was explored, the early European settlers
noticed the robust good health of the Native American Indians.
Tobacco was mistaken as the secret to their good health and was
promoted in Europe as a new medicine.[6]

There were almost no substantial medical
publications, even of standard European works, for nearly a century
after the founding of Jamestown (1609).

In America, around the time of the Revolutionary War
(1775-1783), the practice of medicine was seen as more of a part-time
avocation. Many clergymen served as healers and many of them were quite
competent by the standards of the day. Doctors were usually not
educated.

Books that were popular were mostly how to books such
as Every Man His Own Doctor, John Oliver's Advice on Pregnancy, John
Tennent's Poor Planter's Physician, William Cadogan's Essays on Nursing
and Child Care, Thomas Short on Medicinal Plants, Daniel Defoe's
Accounts of London's Plague of 1665, and Nicholas Culpeper's Guide to
Diseases and Therapies.

Women and male lay practitioners took care of
most medical matters including births, injuries, and illness through
the use of folk healing. Of course, American natural healing varied
from locality to locality with major cities, like Boston ,
Philadelphia, and New York having hospitals and other medical practices
approaching those found in Europe. Sanitation was a major problem in
the larger cities.

Up to 1750s, most folk healers had little medical
education beyond apprenticeships.

1752>{Allopathy}The Pennsylvania Hospital in
Philadelphia became the first permanent general hospital in America
built specifically to care for the sick.

1760>{Allopathy}First licensure law calling for
prospective examination of doctors was passed in New York City.

1765>{Allopathy} First medical school in
Philadelphia was chartered.

1776> Declaration of Independence was signed July
4th.

{Allopathy}By the time of the American Revolution
there were only 41 medical practitioners with a college degree in
medicine.

1787>The US Constitution was signed September
17th.

1791>{Allopathy}Hospital first opens in New York
City.

The whole of the 19th century in the United States
was taken up with a fierce struggle between four different major
medical schools:

for survival and supremacy.

The hygiene movement developed in
America during the 19th century from the water cure and advocated no
use of herbal medications.

Antebellum
America--Age of Romanticism

"Contributing to the stagnation of scientific
advances in the 19th century was the philosophical movement that
dominated American society—Romanticism. Romanticism came to America
from Europe between 1812 and 1861 as a revolt against the Age of
Reason. Rather than rational empirical thought, Romanticism emphasized
feeling, sensitivity, and the supernatural. As Romanticism mixed with
Jacksonian democracy in the 1820s and 1830s, it developed many uniquely
American traits, one of them being religious evangelicalism."[24]

{Pharmacology}Modern Pharmacology was made possible
after the pharmacists had isolated pure substances from the raw herbs.
These isolated and refined drugs "tend to produce effects
of more rapid onset, greater intensity and of shorter duration."[2]
Eventually this would lead to death from adverse drug reactions as a
major cause of death from iatrogenic illness in the twentieth
century.[4]

{Allopathy}Medicine would shift gradually to their
present primary method of treating patients with prescription
medications [5] from their historical use of bloodletting and purges.

{Herbalism}"Until the 1800s most drugs
were given by mouth as preparations of crude plants: ground-up leave,
flowers, and roots, or teas, extracts, and tinctures of them."[3]
Natural healers using herbalism preferred using whole herbs that are
slower acting. With whole herbs any adverse reactions to a herb are
likely to be noticed by signs of nausea, before they become a major
problem. For example, there are three stages to digitalis toxicity. The
symptoms of the first stage are supposed to be gastrointestinal,
usually nausea and vomiting. Administering digitalis as a whole herb
(i.e., a tea made with foxglove) offers a comfortable margin of safety
for catching any adverse drug reactions, at the first stage of
toxicity. But, when digitalis is administered as a prescription drug,
physicians are trained never to expect to see this first stage of
toxicity as the pure drug form is too fast acting.[1]

One of the most overlooked facts about the
19th century was that "opium was on legal sale conveniently and at
low prices throughout the century; morphine came into common use during
and after the Civil War; and heroin was marketed toward the end of the
century. These opiates and countless pharmaceutical preparations
containing them 'were as freely accessible as aspirin is today.'"[31]
One particularly favorite narcotic was laudanum (i.e., opium in
alcohol). It was cheap and widely used to quiet infants.

Herbalism, Homeopathy, and Natural Hygiene
developed during the Health Reform Movement.

The Popular
Health Movement (1820 - 1850)

The Popular Health Movement is usually dismissed in
conventional medical histories as the high-tide of Quackery and medical
cultism because the medical licensing laws were repealed in almost all
of the states by the 1840s.[9]

Here we see people, including some physicians, advocating
a return to the nature of forests and the fresh air of mountains.
They had many ideas about good nutrition, clean water and fresh air,
exercise, sunshine and herbs. The Popular Health Movement was a
reaction against the role of elitist highly educated physicians who
used heroic medical treatments.

They offered advice on good nutrition before the
modern science of nutrition even existed and without the help of any
modern peer reviewed journals. That means their healthy lifestyle advice pre-dated the health advice offered by the American Heart
Association on healthy diets by at least one hundred years. "Regardless
of their particular bent, all of the food reformers had a common
philosophy: bad eating habits led to social disorder. Like physical
fitness proponents, they saw a connection between reshaping the body
and reshaping American society to improve the individual and the
country."[24]

Alcott, William A. The Young House-Keeper or
Thoughts on Food and Cookery. Boston: George W. Light, 1838.

Alcott, William A. The Laws of Health: Or,
Sequel to "The House I Live In." Boston: John P. Jewett and
Company, 1857.

Smith, John. Fruits and Farinacea, the Proper
Food of Man; Being an Attempt to Prove from History, Anatomy,
Physiology, and Chemistry that the Original, Natural, and Best Diet of
Man is Derived from the Vegetable Kingdom. New York: Fowler &
Wells, 1854.

"The prevention of illness through
exercise and nutrition was an outgrowth of ... [alternative] medicine.
It was a small step from movements like hydropathy which advocated the
'natural' healing powers of water to the idea that fresh air, healthy
food, and exercise could be beneficial."[24]

1803>{Dietary Reform} Samuel Hahnemann, founder of
homeopathy, wrote Treatise on the Effects of Coffee (23 pages)
in Germany, translated by William LaMartine Breyfogle in 1824. Thus, Hahnemann
was one of the first to start the idea, that coffee and tea, as
stimulants, should be considered to be an alkaloid poison. In an age
where narcotics were as commonly used as we use aspirin today, the
early health reformers recognized the addictive nature of caffeine, and
commonly preached that they were alkaloid poisons as dangerous as the
opiates.

1810>{Homeopathy} Samuel Hahnemann wrote Organon
der Heilkunst in Germany which explained the theory of homeopathic
medicine. This book full of vitalistic notions talked about both vital
powers and vital fluids.

1820-1845>{Herbalism}Samuel Thompson (1769-1843)
founded Thompsonianism and was an important figure in the development
of American herbalism. He believed disease resulted from a clogged
system. Detractors called his system the steam-and-puke method. The two
main pillars of Thomsonianism were the native vomit-inducing herb
lobelia, which he employed as a counter-poison, and heat as a method
for curing disease. Thompsonianism became a major influence on the
development of two other forms of American herbalism: Eclecticism and
Physiomedicalism.

1822{Natural Hygiene}Isaac Jennings, MD (1788-1874)
is known as the Father of Natural Hygiene. Jennings received his
medical degree from Yale University. After about 15 years of allopathic
practice Jennings founded Orthopathy, Greek for truth in disease. Believing
symptoms of illness was nature's way of purifying the body, he
advocated solely hygienic nursing and comfort, rather than the use of
drug medication treatments. Jennings was famous for treating his
patients with placebo pills made from bread. He wrote three books, Medicine
Reform (1847), Philosophy of Human Life (1852) and Tree
of Life (1867). He founded and published the Water Cure Journal
and Herald of Reform.

1828-Civil War>Jacksonian democracy: "For
success in this [frontier] environment, the specialized skills - of
lawyer, doctor, financier, or engineer - had a new unimportance."[22]

1823>{Herbalism}The Association of Eclectic
Physicians was founded.

1825>{Homeopathy}German immigrants brought
homeopathy to America. Homeopathy is an alternative system of medical practice
based on the principle that drugs that produce in a healthy person
the same pathological effects that are symptomatic of the disease,
can cure diseases. It had its greatest popularity in the late
19th century when 15% of the doctors in America were homeopaths.

1830s>{Herbalism}Eclectic Medicine was founded by
Dr. Wooster Beach (1794-1868) as a school of Reformed Medicine. Eclecticism
promoted the value of using small dosages of a single remedy to treat
the person as a whole, as well as whole herbal preparations over the
use of isolated active ingredients of a particular plant. At its
peak, Eclecticism claimed more than 20,000 qualified practitioners in
the United States. Eclectic medicine offically ended in 1939 due to a
lack of financial support of its medical schools from philanthropists.

1830-1850{Natural Hygiene}Sylvester Graham
(1794-1851), founder of Grahamism, was a Presbyterian minister who
preached on temperance and stressed whole-wheat flour and vegetarian
diets. Beyond diet, Graham recommended hard mattresses, open bedroom
windows, chastity, cold showers, loose clothing (so that your skin can
breath fresh air), pure water and vigorous exercise. He was a
controversial author and lecturer. He also started the nation's first
health food store, health bookstore, and health food restaurant. Graham
was the first to talk about the importance of bulk matter in food, over
a hundred years before the importance of dietary fiber became widely
recognized by the science of nutrition.

1830-1860>{Natural Hygiene}75 Health Spas were
opened.

1832-1890>{Public Health} The major years were
1832, 1849, 1866, and 1873 for cholera epidemics in America. By
1890, cholera was practically controlled. The public health response to
these cholera epidemics was to provide clean water supplies and
sanitation.

1838>{Physiomedicalism}Physiomedicalism was
founded by Dr. Alva Curtis (?-1881). "The physiomedicalists
emphasized the use of sanative, or nonpoisonous, botanical remedies to
balance functions and enhance vitality."[28]This school of
medicine recognized that some disease symptoms were positive,
eliminative and reconstructive efforts of vital energy, while other
symptoms resulted from physical impediments to the body's attempts to
heal itself (or, what Florence Nightingale would later call poor
nursing). Physiomedicalism classified herbal medicines by their effect
on the circulation system.

1840s>{Hydropathy}Hydropathy was based on the
presumed therapeutic properties of water. In its many variations, it
encompassed prolonged bathing in spas, intensive drinking of water, and
the promotion of sweating.[8] The standard allopathic medical practice
of the time was to deny water to the acutely sick patient. Interest in
the water-cure started from the observation that fever patients tended
to recover when they were given water to drink.

1844>{Homeopathy}American Institute of Homeopathy
became first national medical society.

1844>{Hydropathy} Dr. Joel Shew introduces an
European system of hydrotherapy, the water-cure, to the United States.
Hydropathists professed to be able to do with water everything that
they had formerly sought to do with allopathic drugs. "The
hydropathic system had three treatments: the general application of
water by bath, the application to a particular part of the body, and
internal cleansing by drinking or injecting."[24] Shew
later adopts the Hygieo-Therapy dietary and exercise plan, as well as
its emphasis on fresh air and sunlight.

1847>{Allopathy}The American Medical
Association was founded in order to suppress competition from other
methods of treatments. The organization described the practices of
opposing sects as quackery, and its first action was to ban referrals
to lay healers and nonorthodox physicians, such as homeopaths.[10]

1848>{Herbalism}A Guide to Health by
Benjamin Colby delineated the basic practices and philosophy of
Thomsonian Medicine.

By the 1850s, ordinary citizens of every social class
went out to find alternatives to the regulars or allopaths. Middle and
upper class patients in considerable numbers liked the careful personal
attention and cautious dosing of homeopathy as well as the hygienic
discipline of hydropathy.

1850s>Domestic refrigeration was introduced in
the form of ice boxes from the mid 19th century to the 1930's. As
the ice used to cool food was melted it was replaced with ice bought
from commercial manufacturers in urban areas.[29]

1850>{Hydropathy}"Hydropathy was so
popular that it had its own magazine, The Water-Cure Journal, published
by O. S. Fowler's company and boasting a circulation of 50,000 in 1850."[24]

1853>{Natural Hygiene}William Alcott, MD (1798 -
1859) designates the hygienic system as distinct from the hydropathic
part of the movement. The problem with the water-cure was that it did
not require a radical change in lifestyle. Hydropathy merely
substituted water for drugs.

1853>{Natural Hygiene} Russell Thacher Trall, MD
(1812-1877) founded an establishment in New York City for
Hygieo-therapy, or the water-cure treatment called the
Hygeo-Therapeutic College. He edited the New York Organ, a
weekly temperance journal, and the Hydropathic Review, a
quarterly magazine, from 1845 to 1848, and was an author of many health
related books such as the Hydropathic Encycolopedia in 1852.
Trall is the person who was most responsible for separating hydropathy
from the hygienic system.

1857>The first refrigerated railway car was
introduced by the Chicago meat packing industry.[29]

1857>{Natural Hygiene}Trall wrote in the
Water-Cure Journal that he had no faith in the virtues of water in the
treatment of disease. "All the virtue we have to deal with,"
he said, "exists in and is a part of the living organism."
He said that he had "as much faith in the virtues of
calomel, arnica, peltatum, or lobelia, as we have in the virtues of
cold water, and we fear that those who talk about the virtues of either
have a very erroneous or imperfect idea of the true basis of the
healing art." In other words, Trall was complaining that
use of the water-cure, as a quick fix, did not require a radical change
in lifestyle for successful treatment. Only a change in lifestyle
promoted true healing.

1859>Charles Darwin publishes his On the
Origin of Species, in London England. People in the 19th century
would soon become less than convinced that everything about a human
being could be explained biologically. The medical profession
obsessed with its mechanical materialism from the perspective of the
19th century person would end up attacking far more than just
unscientific alternative medicine. Mechanical materialism was a direct
attack upon the Christian faith and its notion of a soul as well as an
attack upon all Classical Western values. When science attacks
alternative medicine, it is really claiming that everything about a
human being can be explained by biology. For with biomedicine all
Classical Western values such as bravery, loyalty, hard work, and free
will are only a matter of molecules, genetics, and the right
combination of prescription medication. The public would soon develop a
mistrust of the new and rapid ascendance of science that precluded any
belief in the ability of a person to rise above carnal needs and
desires. The 19th century American public would soon see fasting as
proof that people could live through divine grace rather than by the
normal laws of nature. Interest in Spiritualism would soon develop as a
direct response to mechanical materialistic Darwinism as a form of
scientific religion that proclaimed that it could scientifically study
the soul.

1860>{Allopathy}Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894),
U.S. author and physician famously "promoted the healing
power of nature in a widely known annual address" voicing
therapeutic nihilism when he said "that if the whole
materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it
would be so much the better for mankind, and all the worse for the
fishes."[12] In other words, therapeutic nihilism was
a health reform movement among physicians that advocated a return to vitalism
or the healing power of nature heresy. Therapeutic nihilism is
currently being treated like a dirty word in contemporary scientific
medical literature, which strongly attacks any association to it. (For
example, scientific authors go to extremes to claim that William Osler,
M.D. was not a therapeutic nihilist. According to them, Osler merely
avoided writing reckless prescriptions, especially compound
prescriptions, at a time when reckless prescriptions and
poly-pharmaceuticals was the standard medical practice.) Therapeutic
nihilism dominated most of the second half of the 19th century and the
progressive era. And, played a large role in bringing heroic medicine
to an end and the start of scientific biomedicine.

1861>With the onset of the Civil War national
attention focuses on survival and brings the luxury interests of the
Popular Health Reform Movement to an end.

1861>{Faster is Better?}The Western Union Company
completes the first transcontinental telegraph line.

1861-1865>{Natural Hygiene}The Civil War causes
Health Spas everywhere to close. Two Civil War soldiers died of disease
for every one killed in battle, or some 560,000 soldiers died from
disease during the Civil War. About half of the deaths from disease
during the Civil War were caused by intestinal disorders, mainly
typhoid fever, diarrhea, and dysentery. Malaria struck approximately
one quarter of all servicemen. The remainder died from pneumonia and
tuberculosis. Outbreaks of these diseases were caused by overcrowded
and unsanitary conditions in the field. Risks from surgery were great.
Doctors in the field hospitals had no notion of antiseptic surgery,
resulting in extremely high death rates from post-operative
infection.[23]

1861>{Natural Hygiene}Writing in an editorial,
Trall continues to write: "Water possesses no power
whatever to cure any disease. Nature is the remedial principle."
Hydropathy was only a reform movement, rather than a revolution, that
sought merely to substitute water in the form of baths, hot and cold
applications, enemas, douches, packs, fomentations, dripping wet
sheets, etc., for drugs.

1863>{Dietary Reform}Their prophet Ellen White, and others
formally organized the Seventh-day Adventist Church. A month
later, White instituted health reforms based upon a vision
from God that people wishing to live a life of the spirit have a sacred
duty to attend to their health. She advocated a lacto-ovo
vegetarian diet, which could contain small amounts of dairy products
and eggs. And, abstinence from alcohol, tobacco and the caffeinated
drinks of coffee and tea. Today, the Adventists run many hospitals,
natural food stores, and vegetarian restaurants and an institution of
higher education, Loma Linda University.

1866>{Dietary Reform} Seventh-day Adventist Ellen
White opened the Western Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek,
Michigan. A health reform institute that would care for the sick and
teach the principles of healthful living to the public.

1869>{Faster is Better?}The American
transcontinental railroad was completed which enabled travelers to go
from coast to coast in only 7 days.

Only the alternative movements of homeopathy, natural
hygiene and eclecticism managed to last from the 1830s through the rest
of the 19th century.

Postbellum America

"By the middle of the 19th century, ...
[sanitation] reforms made the northern cities healthier than the
countryside. Rural areas, however, could not afford the public health
measures that improved conditions in the largest and most prosperous
cities. Cholera was a major killer on wagon trains heading West. Yellow
fever, malaria, hookworm, and other maladies still prevailed in the
South, which experienced major yellow fever epidemics in the 1850s and
in 1873. These epidemics led to the creation of the National Board of
Health and a federal quarantine system."[25]

Health care is centered on the individual
practitioner, rather than on the institution or in science.

{Allopathy}Science, like the hospital, almost
overnight came to assume a vastly altered and expanded position in the
medical world of postbellum America.

1870s -1900>{Allopathy}In America, Jacksonian
mistrust had given way to the scientific optimism of an industrial
revolution.[21]

1870s-1880s>Support for the restoration of medical
licensing was sought among all the competing groups.

{Allopathy}The Germans became leaders in pharmacology
and in medical training. Many Americans went to Germany to attend
medical school. German-trained American doctors became harsh critics of
U.S. medical education and urged medical schools to reorganize along
German lines. Harvard and John Hopkins were the first to do so. The
regular's medical schools adopted the Harvard-Johns Hopkins model and
dropped botany in favor of pharmacology.

1873>{Nursing}First training school for nurses in
America was opened by Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) who was also the
first female physician in this country (1849).

1873>{Nursing}Three training schools for nurses
were established in New York.

Americans who lived through the
second half of the nineteenth century experienced the most fundamental
changes in how people experienced reality since the start of Western
civilization.

Modern
life begins between the 1870s and 1880s.

The pace of life begins to speed up. People began to
notice how the acceleration of the perception of the duration of time
and the apparent shortening of physical distances was inducing stress
in them. Americans who lived through the second half of the
nineteenth century experienced the greatest, most fundamental changes
ever experienced by mankind: electricity, telephone, telegraph, and the
railroad.[26] Western notions of stress was a direct consequence of
theses technological accelerations that began to really take off during
the second half of the 19th century. People in our modern times
have to do more things, with less and less time to do them in.

1875>{Natural Health}John Harvey Kellogg
(1852–1943) upon graduating from medical school in 1875, Kellogg began
working at the Adventist's Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek,
Michigan. He became the superintendent of it in 1876 when he was only
24 years old. And, renamed it the Battle Creek Sanitarium (Sans) in
1878 because it was a place where people could learn how to stay well.
Under his direction, the Sans soon became a luxurious amusement center
for the rich and famous to visit.

1876>In Dakota territory, at the Little Big Horn,
General George Armstrong Custer was killed.

1876>{Biomedicine}Robert Koch (1843-1910) proved
in Germany that anthrax (Milzbrand) was caused by a specific
bacterium, at a time when people still thought that most diseases were
caused by poisonous bad air (i.e., miasmas). This event marks the
official birth of preventive medicine and the very premature birth of
biomedicine. Allopathy unofficially ends, while biomedicine begins.

1879>Thomas Edison invented the electric light
bulb.

1880>{Modern Stress}George Beard, MD, a
neurologist, wrote A Practical Treatise on Nervous Exhaustion
(Neurasthenia). Neurasthenia, or Nervous Exhaustion, was defined as
a condition of general malaise, and was attributed by Beard to the
stresses of modern life. It was the first book to express the
concept that your mental life can have a profound negative impact upon
your physical health. Beard completed his pre-med studies at Yale
in 1862, and received his medical degree from New York's College of
Physician's (now known as Columbia University) in 1866. He became a
member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York in 1886.
Beard, a real physician, was one of the most important American
electrotherapists of the 19th century. His contemporary critics
referred to him as the "P.T. Barnum of medicine."Beard's
nervous exhaustion of neurasthenia would eventually develop into the
modern concepts of Chronic-Fatigue-Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and Multiple
Chemical Sensitivities.[27]

1881>Clara Barton, Civil War nurse and student
of Hygiene, founds the American Red Cross and becomes its first
president.

1881>{Faster is Better?}Frederick Taylor
(1856-1915) introduces time-motion studies, where workers' movements
are dictated in order to maximize efficiency and boost speed.

1881>{Modern Stress}{Lifestyle Diseases}George
Beard, MD wrote American Nervousness. Neurasthenia was first
described as American nervousness. Beard saw a significant correlation
between American social organization and nervous illness. Beard wrote:"American nervousness is the product of
American civilization." Unlike other countries, America
offered its inhabitants the possibility of unlimited freedom which
resulted in unlimited ambition among the populace. Beard wrote: "It
has long seemed the especial province of Americans to abuse their
nerves from the cradle to the grave." A deficiency in nervous
energy was the price exacted by industrialized urban societies,
competitive business and social environments, and the luxuries, vices,
and excesses of modern life. "The chief and primary cause
of ... [the] very rapid increase of nervousness is modern civilization,
which is distinguished from the ancient [civilizations] by these five
characteristics: steampower, the periodical press, the telegraph, the
sciences, and the mental activity of women." American
nervousness was alarmingly frequent "among the well-to-do
and the intellectual, and especially among those in the professions and
in the higher walks of business life, who are in deadly earnest in the
race for place and power."

1886>Statue of Liberty was unveiled in New York
Harbor.

1888>{Biomedicine}The American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists was formed.

1889>{Biomedicine}Johns Hopkins Hospital opens,
followed four years later by the opening of the School of Medicine
which was modeled after German universities that emphasized research
and laboratory studies.

Osteopathy, Chiropractic, and
Naturopathy
developed at the turn of the century.

Progressive Era of Health
Care Reform (1890-1920)

"The Progressive movement of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries addressed the health problems of the urban
poor. Its many reforms included meat inspections, the Pure Food and
Drug Act, and pasteurization of milk."[25]

1890-1920>{Allopathy}During the Progressive Era,
medicine chose to look to the biological roots of disease rather than
to the illness as experienced by the patient. The basic structures
of twentieth-century American medicine--its focus on biomedical
science, its reliance on technologically based hospital care, and its
systems for medical education and training--were firmly in place by the
end of the Progressive Era.[17]

1890s>{Faster is Better?}The popularity of new
sports governed by the clock, like football and basketball, grows
dramatically.

1890>The use of refrigerators was confined to
the restaurant and the brewing, dairy and meat-packing industries.[29]

1891>{Osteopathy}Andrew Still starts his practice
of osteopathy in Missouri.

1892>{Biomedicine}Sir William Osler, MD
(1849-1919), the father of psychosomatic medicine, published his Principles
and Practice of Medicine. Bloodletting was still being recommended
in it, as well as in the 1923 edition. Osler wrote: "During
the first five decades of this century, the profession bled too much,
but during the last decades we have certainly bled too little."[7]
Like their arrogance, physicians are known for their preference for
treating patients with heroic medical measures.

1894>{Biomedicine}The first cesarean section was
performed in Boston.

1895>{Chiropractic}Daniel David Palmer, founded
chiropractic.

1895>{Naturopathy}Benedict Lust (1872-1945) opened
the Kneipp Water-Cure Institute in New York City.

1897>{Natural Health}Dr. John Harvey Kellogg
served the first serving of corn flakes at the Battle Creek Sanitarium
as a health food. Health foods would soon be sold through the mail as a
way of taking the Sans experience home.

By 1900>Horses outnumbered cars 21 million to
8,000. And with so many horses, the accumulation of horse manure was a
major health problem.

1900>{Biomedicine}Fewer than 7% of U.S. doctors
were AMA members in 1900. Allopathic physicians began to refer to their
type of practice as scientific medicine to differentiate themselves
from their competition whom they called quacks. From its start, the
AMA promoted educational reforms that tended to promote its own type of
medical practice as the only legitimate one. State licensing
examinations began to favor allopathy over homeopathy, and the AMA's
control over the licensing boards eventually brought the pluralistic
system of medical care in the U.S. to an end.[11]

1900>{Physiomedicalism}The Philosophy of
Physiomedicalism by Dr. J. M. Thurston was published. Thurston
broaden the scope of physiomedicalism which formerly just concentrated
on the role of the circulation system in disease to also include the
autonomic nervous system. "The human organism was perceived as
essentially a realm dominated by vital force expressed as functional
actions. In disease conditions its nature is inherently resistive,
eliminative, and restorative. For instance, vital action of the body
was seen as the most powerful antiseptic; so while fever was
controlled, it was not subdued. Cleansing the cellular environment by
assisting elimination was deemed necessary before nutritive processes
and restoration could begin. While herbs could assist healing,
overprescribing by amount or number of remedies was considered
counter-productive, since the body responds better to being coaxed than
driven."[28]

1900>{Naturopathy}The first issue of The Kneipp
Water Cure Monthly, begun and was edited by Benedict Lust.[28]

1902>{Naturopathy}Benedict Lust purchased the
rights to the term naturopathy from John H. Scheel, who had
coined it in 1895.

1902>{Naturopathy}American Institute of
Naturopathy opened.

1903>{Dietary Reform} Seventh-day Adventist Ellen
White published Education. She wrote, "Grains, fruits, nuts, and
vegetables, in proper combination, contain all the elements of
nutrition; and when properly prepared, they constitute the diet that
best promotes both physical and mental strength."

1905>{Biomedicine}The JAMA began accepting
advertising from the Patent Medicine companies.

1905>{Natural Health}John Harvey Kellogg first
published: The Simple Life in a Nutshell, a tract on 60
rules for Biologic Living where Kellogg suggests that lifestyle affects
your longevity. He advocated natural foods with no meat, sugar, or
stimulants (coffee, tea, alcohol). His concept of biologic living
reflected the key elements of natural health: a healthy diet, exercise,
vitamins as the "the real elixir of life", and stress
reduction.

1906>{Processed Foods}Will Keith Kellogg, added
sugar to the corn flake recipe and began marketing them as a cold
breakfast food.

1909>{Mind-Body Connection}Richard Cabot, MD
(1868-1939) publishes his Social Service and the Art of Healing and
wrote: "I found myself constantly baffled and discouraged
when it came to treatment. Treatment in more than half of the
cases...involved an understanding of the patient's economic situation
and economic means, but still more of his mentality, his character, his
previous mental and industrial history, all that brought him to his
present condition in which sickness, fear, worry, and poverty were
found inextricably mingled."[18]

1910>{Biomedicine}The publication of Abraham
Flexner's Medical Education in the United States and Canada.
The Flexner Report, commissioned by the AMA, criticized the
medical education of its era as a loose and poorly structured
apprenticeship system that generally lacked any defined standards or
goals beyond the generation of financial profit.

1913>The first home electric refrigerator, called
the Domelre, was put on the market on the market in Chicago for $900,
at a time when the average annual income was less than $2,000.[30]

1916>{Naturopathy}The Herald of Health and
Naturopath magazine, published by Benedict Lust, "began a regular
Phytotherapy [i.e., plant cure] Department (subtitled The American Herb
Doctor). It was edited by M. G. Young and discussed human ailments and
medicinal herbs."[28]

1917>{Pharmacology}The Trading with the Enemy Act
allowed German drug patents to be handed over to US firms under
government license. War World I ended Germany's former domination
of medical research, training, and pharmaceuticals.

1918>The United States stood 17th out of 20
nations in mortality rates.

The high-technology of medicine
becomes firmly housed in the hospital. Hospitals are transformed from
institutions designed for long-term care of the sick into facilities
designed to test, treat and release patients as fast as possible.

Most of the decline in infectious
diseases occurred in the early part of the 20th century well before the
introduction of vaccines targeted at these diseases.

The 20th Century

"By the turn of the 20th century, the United
States was a major center for medical research, and vaccines,
antiseptic methods, and preventive measures substantially improved
medical care. One estimate is that by 1910 a patient had a 50-50 chance
of being cured by a doctor's advice. As the 20th century began, deaths
from communicable diseases were generally declining, although deaths
from tuberculosis and influenza remained significant. At the same time,
degenerative diseases of old age, such as heart disease, started to
become more common causes of death."[25]

{Biomedicine} Vaccines for measles, scarlet
fever, pneumonia, tuberculosis, typhoid, diphtheria, and poliomyelitis
were not introduced until after 1935, long after the significant
decline in incidence for these infectious diseases took place.[19]

The power of water to cure disease is based on
its ability to lower body temperature during fevers and on its ability
to wash away dirt and germs. Staying disease free in a social
environment is in large part a result of low-tech general cleanliness.
Historically, plagues were caused by humans polluting their environment
and then living in their own filth. Clean water supplies and the
sanitary processing of garbage, horse manure, and human waste developed
without debate or double-blind peer reviewed research published in
respectable journals. Improved public hygiene infrastructure in
urban areas is what resulted in the decline of infectious diseases that
occurred in the early part of the 20th century. Diseased patients
were also isolated from the general population in hospitals.

1920s>Woman suffrage and prohibition were big
issues.

1920>Radio became a commercial broadcasting
medium.

1921>{Naturopathy}Naturopaths begin to publicly
struggle over whether their profession should utilize herbal medicines.
An editorial appeared in the Herald of Health and Naturopath
magazine that addressed the concern in a profession claiming to be
drugless as to whether herbs were indeed drugs. "In response to the
question, 'Are herbs drugs?' the early naturopathic belief was, simply
stated, 'Herbs are vegetables'"[28]

1922{Natural Hygiene}Herbert M. Shelton, ND, DC
(1895-1985) published An Introduction to Natural Hygiene. Shelton
coined the term Natural Hygiene and started the downward
spiraling trend of popularizing the concept to the point of it becoming
totally ridiculous, away from its original roots. As poorly written
as Shelton's literary works were when compared to Fit for Life
written by the Diamonds, Shelton reads like an intellectual giant.

1926{Natural Hygiene}John H. Tilden, MD (1851-1940)
published Toxemia Explained: The true interpretation of the cause
of disease which established the Natural Hygiene thesis that the
true cause of all disease is the accumulation of toxins in the blood.

1930s>{Biomedicine}The movement to specialized
medicine really startes taking off as the hospital takes an
increasingly central role in medical life.

mid-1930s>{Naturopathy}Naturopaths begin
identifying with herbs and expanding their herbal repertoire.[28]

1930>{Natural Health}John Harvey Kellogg wrote: The
Biologic Life: Rules for Right Living, a tract where Kellogg argued
that people were becoming "neurotic, daft, dyspepsic, and
degenerate" as a result of "the perversions of our modern
[American] civilization ... [which] are responsible for the
multitudinous maladies and degeneracies which yearly multiply in number
and gravity."

1940s>{Biomedicine}Western conventional modern
medicine is intricately linked to the scientific method and that most
of the research in the field focuses on minute aspects of the body's
functions and on the direct observation of chemical and bacterial
processes in the treatment of disease.

1940s>{Mind-Body Connection}Henry Beecher coined
the term 'placebo effect.' He discovered during World War II that pain
experienced by wounded soldiers could be controlled with saline
injections. Subsequent research will soon show that up to 35 percent of
a therapeutic response to any medical treatment could be attributed to
the power of belief.[19]

1940s>{Naturopathy}The Naturopath magazine wrote: "The
ingesting of anything had generally been opposed on the grounds that
most people would prefer to swallow a remedy rather than exercise or
work constructively on their health. Though nature cure taught that
medicine was unnecessary, many difficult cases responded well to
nonsuppressive herbs. Herbal simples encouraged elimination of waste
through gentle stimulation of excretory organs, and also supplied cells
and glands with nutrition in small doses that could readily be
assimilated. The fundamental difference between the medical and
naturopathic approach to using herbs lay in their preparation.
Conventional medicine used preparations made by laboratory methods,
extracting the most active constituents, which could transform many
relatively safe herbs into toxic drugs. Naturopaths used herbs or their
simple extracts in their natural, whole state."[28]

1941>There were three and a half million electric
refrigerators in the United States. "Roughly 45% of
American homes were taking advantage of mechanical refrigeration by the
time we entered the Second World War."[29]

1941>The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on
December 7th.

1946>"Mass production of modern refrigerators
didn't get started until after World War II."[30]

1950s>{Biomedicine}"Modern
antibiotics—including sulfa drugs and penicillin first used during
World War II—became available to the American public in the postwar
years. These drugs provided the first effective weapons against
bacterial infections, and their use transformed medicine in the 1950s."[25]
Medical specialization took a dramatic jump. The success of both
hospitals and medical specialization was mediated through the rapid
expansion of laboratory technologies. Medicine's crisis derives from a
fundamental defect namely, adherence to a model of disease no longer
adequate for the scientific tasks and social responsibilities of
medicine. The simplistic biomedical approach of medicine generally
looks for single, very specific causes for illnesses, with
correspondingly specific treatments, like antibiotics for infections,
that are expected to be effective for that illness in most people,
under most conditions.

1950>The Korean War began.

1954>{Biomedicine}The polio vaccine was developed.

1955>"80% of American homes now have
refrigerators."[30]

1963>President Kennedy was assassinated November
22nd.

1965>The War in Vietnam began to escalate.

1969: Man set foot on the moon for the first time on
July 16th.

Confirmations of the unscientific
nature of orthodox medicine starts coming in as many physicians start
to openly realize the poverty of scientific evidence to support the
majority of current medical practices.

1970>{Biomedicine}Science based medicine first
appears[13] with the McMaster Medical School in Canada that used a
clinical learning strategy that eventually develops into Evidence-Based
Medicine. It further came into vogue in the 1980s at University of
Harvard. The real boost to EBM and its formal acceptance by
conventional medicine came in 1995 at Oxford, UK with the establishment
of the Center for Evidence-based Medicine. All weak points of
scientific approach to medicine are concentrated in its biomedical
model of the disease.[14] "A patient is nothing more
than a 'disease case', a trigger of a given 'disease unit'. The disease
is the exclusive matter of interest and intervention of a physician,
who should only recognize and fight a disease, and nothing else."[15]

1972>{Biomedicine}The American Hospital
Association adopted a Patient's Bill of Rights.

1977>{Mind-Body Connection}George L. Engel, MD
(1913-1999) first proposed the biopsychosocial model of health, illness
and healing. The simplistic biomedical model assumes that all disease
is caused by structural anatomic or biochemical abnormality. The
physician's responsibility is limited to finding the abnormality to be
cured. But without an easily discovered abnormality, as in the
functional gastrointestinal disorders, the simplistic biomedical model
fails. In contrast, the complex biopsychosocial model is concerned with
illness, the subjective sense of suffering or reduced capacity to
function. The biopsychosocial model is a much more complex,
'systems theory' approach to health and illness. It does not look
for single, specific causes for illness, but sees health, illness and
healing as resulting from the interacting effects of events of very
different types, including biological, psychological, and social
factors. All of these are seen as systems that affect on another
and interact with one another to affect individual health. In the past
decade, even as medical technology has advanced rapidly, there has been
an increased appreciation of the value of the mind-body connection
systems approach to managing both functional disorders and chronic
disease.

1990s>Health care costs reach 14% of U.S. GNP.

1993: World Wide Web becomes popular.

1996>{Mind-Body Connection}Why We Get Sick: The
New Science of Darwinian Medicine[16] is published. The healing
force of nature heresy makes its way back into academic medicine, but
is still ignored by most physicians. Darwinian Medicine proposes that
descriptions of disease in current biomedical textbooks omit a crucial
section - an evolutionary explanation for why humans are vulnerable to
this disease. It is concerned with questions like: What is the
utility of cough, fever and anxiety? A question that was answered by
Isaac Jennings, and others, in the Hygiene movement over 100 years ago.

1998>{Biomedicine} Michael L. Millenson publishes
his Demanding Medical Excellence: Doctors and Accountability in the
Information Age. "Millenson decries the lack of
scientific-based medical practice and medicine's failure to wake up due
to its own historical studies. He cites data that 85% of current
practice has not been scientifically validated despite medicine's
claims of the physician-scientist."[20]

NOTICE: No claim is being made about the
therapeutic value of any therapy, treatment, or system of medicine
mentioned on this Web page.

This Web page presents historical events and trends in history. No
history is ever totally complete and 100% precise. And, accordingly no
guarantee is being made concerning the completeness and accuracy of the
information presented on this Web page. This Web page is obviously a
selective presentation of history from the perspective that is most
favorable to the ideologies of natural health.

"Once a diagnosis is made, allopathic medical
treatment is based almost exclusively on the administration of drugs."
Andrew Weil, M.D., Health and Healing, Houghton Mifflin Company, New
York, 1998, page 96.